The Disaster of Moral Absolutism

By John "Birdman" Bryant

Conservatives, and particularly religious believers,
are distinguished for believing that the rules of morality (or
ethics, if you prefer the more modern term) are
"absolute", ie, immutable and unchanging (and usually
prescribed by God), rather than "relativistic", ie,
different in different circumstances. As it happens, however,
conservatives are not merely wrong on this point, but their
championing of moral absolutism has provided the basis for a
disaster for Western civilization. Beyond this, the belief in
absolute morality is pernicious because it has led to numerous
wrong conclusions, and to important misbehavior based upon those
conclusions. The present essay is an attempt to explain these
matters.

To begin our discussion, let us note that the
difference between moral absolutism and moral relativism may be
said to be that while both provide a list of "shalls"
and "shall nots", moral relativism also provides a list
of qualifications -- ie, cases where a particular
"shall" or "shall not" does not apply --
while moral absolutism recognizes no exceptions. In fact,
however, virtually every conservative recognizes qualifications
to "absolute" moral laws. Consider, for example, the
6th Commandment "Thou shalt not kill": Many if not most
conservatives recognize numerous exceptions, including killing in
war, and killing which is necessary to defend one's own life and
property and the lives and property of other (law-abiding)
citizens. The commandment in question is sometimes rendered
"Thou shalt do no murder", which is intended to imply
the legitimacy of some of these exceptions, but this rewording is
really a copout because all it really says is "Thou shalt do
no bad killing",
where the definition of "bad killing" is left to one's
minister, one's personal proclivities, or the legislature -- none
of which are widely recognized as sources of absolute wisdom.

The Sixth Commandment, however, is not a special case;
for it is easy to come up with reasonable exceptions to virtually
any other rule of "absolute" morality. For example,
adultery is defined by law, so if laws change, or if they differ
in different localities, then this means that a person might be
considered to be committing adultery by one set of laws but not
by another, or at one time but not another -- all of which hardly
places adultery in the "absolute morality" category.
Likewise, stealing is dependent on particular legal definitions,
but also involves such complicated moral situations as the poor
man who takes food from a rich man to keep from starving (This
particular situation was the theme of Victor Hugo's famous 19th
century novel Les Miserables.)

But if it is important to realize that morality is not
absolute, it is even more important to realize that it changes
with times and situations. Perhaps the most striking example of
this is sexual morality: In earlier times, the possibility of
pregnancy and venereal disease made extramarital sexual
intercourse virtually unthinkable for those caring to lead
anything other than a thoroughly degraded life; but with the
development of contraception and venereal prophylaxis, the most
important barriers to extramarital sex disappeared, giving rise
to the "sexual revolution". This is not, of course, to
say that sexual freedom is an unmixed blessing; but it is to
point out that, in at least this case, morality is dependent on
the current state of technology.

Morality, however, is dependent on much more than
technology. Consider, for example, the fact that things which are
relatively rare are considered more valuable than things which
are relatively common, which accounts for the fact that diamonds
are valued far more than dogs, even tho dogs are actually far
more useful. The same consideration applies to the valuation of
human life: Only a hundred years ago the human population was
relatively small, and hence human life was considered relatively
valuable; but with a world population which has grown to such
proportions as to threaten the environment of many countries and
make many others uncomfortably crowded, the value placed on human
life is often very little. To illustrate, we need only contrast
the relatively-lightly-populated US, in which an injury or death
can result in multimillion dollar awards, with such densely-
populated countries as Japan, in which suicide is an honored
tradition, or Iran, which sends children to be slaughtered in
battle, or Colombia, where a contract killing costs only $100.

But if the moral value of human life depends on
population, it also depends on wealth. In particular, most
societies prior to very recent times simply could not afford to
support the severely handicapped, with the result that babies
with handicaps were "exposed" (this was the practice in
ancient Greece) or otherwise "encouraged" to die, and
those who acquired handicaps later in life were often reduced to
beggary and usually suffered an untimely death. In modern times,
however, where the machine age and the blossoming of technology
have produced wealth undreamed of even a century ago, a clamor
has arisen not only to save every bit of detritus that emerges
from the human birth canal, but also to provide economically for
every individual no matter how much of a financial drain or
negative influence he is on society.

Because so many in America still place a high value on
every kind of human life in spite of both the world population
problem and the fact that much life is worth little or actually
has a negative social value, this illustrates what may be called
the "time-lag problem" of morality, ie, the fact that
morals take time to catch up to the reality of the world, and
that the morality of yesterday may be woefully out of date in the
present age. And ironically enuf, altho our liberal-infested
government is supposedly run by those of a "new-age"
morality, one of the central points of the morality which it is
imposing on us is precisely the very ancient and
currently-out-of-date moral postulate of the high value of human
low- lifes, who are currently being subsidized to the tune of
billions of dollars per year by the many varieties of
taxpayer-funded welfare, and who are taking advantage of the
largess to increase their numbers at an alarming rate.